Guild Wars 2

As everyone would have noticed, the rewards from this (Wintersday) event are much more aesthetically themed compared to all the other events so far. Much to the credit of the artists and developers this Wintersday looks amazing and there are no problems in that department. However there is a large part of the community that were disappointed with the rewards and possibility to make money from the final Tixx chest and have absolutely no use for the rewards such as the toy frames and cogs.

I know very well that a large part of the player base is happy with rewards of no monetary gain, but what about the others that were hoping to progress towards their legendary or something using this event?

I myself have no interest in making untradable mini’s, or don’t really see much value in permanent tonics and I know there are many that would feel the same. This leaves us with stacks of these cogs and frames in our inventories which we have no use for.

Would it be so bad for A-net to implement a vendor or change the existing ones that deal in ugly clothes, so that we can sell the cogs for a low but reasonable amount of money or even something such as Giant wintersday gift boxes(account bound or not)! Just to keep the people who used their cogs already from raging as well.

I personally can’t see any problem with such a system and if done reasonably, I don’t see how anybody opposed to “precursor handout events” or any ‘Straw men’ would be able to have legitimate issues with it.

Please keep discussion civil, constructive and stay mindful that my point is that it would be nice if there was something for everyone in this Wintersday event!
Also straw man go away..

You can’t keep everybody happy. It’s not possible. Some will never be happy unless they are given a legendary straight out of Tixx’s chest.

Besides, it’s a Christmas event, let’s be honest, most of the stuff we receive at Christmas is rubbish (as a 39 year old, this is definitely true of me) so the event fits well.

True you definitely can’t, but I think they could certainly try to draw many more players in than they currently are! Plus some monetary gain isn’t a bad thing, free legendary or not this is a christmas event and certainly not an event fit for pointless rewards to some people.

#support
I’d gladly trade my cogs for gifts, as I made tonics with my frames, and have no interest in making the pets, especially if it gave me more chances at that cursed unbreakable bell.

To me, these events are nothing more than a way to grab as much cash from people as possible. So far all I’ve seen is take, take, take from Anet. This is true of the all three events so far. No wonder they are planning more for January and February. The gambling boxes alone must be earning FAR more than any subscription based game with the same number of players as GW2.

I just play the bits I like and have low expectations on rewards. That way there is no disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the event. I’ve grabbed a couple of toys and had some fun with the mini games. But I haven’t spent a load of real life cash on things hoping to get something nice like some people have. No wonder they are disappointed. The RNG in this game is insane.

If you wish to use the event to earn something of value, e.g., Gold, why not spend the time out in the world, farming the various presents scattered about for Wintersday Gifts, which you can then proceed to either gamble with in order to get a Unbreakable Choir Bell or Endless Toymaker’s Tonic—both which value 40G on the Trading Post—or to straight up sell for profits?

You can even turn the Frames into Endless <Toy> Tonics, chuck 4 of those into the Mystic Forge and hope to get a Endless Dolyak Tonic (100G) or Endless Toymaker Tonic (40G). Additionally you can now purchase these frames from the holiday vendor(s), so it should be possible to repeat for as long as you want to keep doing it.

If you have absolutely no use for the Mystic Cogs, and do not wish to hang on to them for the possibility of future implementations where they’re used, you can vendor them for some minor Silver (1 Copper each, 7 Silver if you collected all 700). Not exactly something that helps massively, but they don’t need to take up inventory space or be flat out destroyed for nothing.

Personally, I do not think (holiday) events needs to be about earning Gold for the players, I think they should be more about fluff and fun. What I’d rather see, is a cut back on the insane RNG they throw in our faces for these events, at the very least when it comes to real money transactions, as-in; the Gem Store. Sell us stuff where we have a high probability of getting what we want, or straight up know we get what we pay for. Gambling boxes are not my idea of fun event content, plus you are likely to get duplicates of stuff you don’t want, e.g., 2 Santa hats and 3 duplicate Mini Pets (after making Festivoo the Merry).

Considering that the Lost Shores event was pretty much all crabs, explosions and sweet loot (or the potential for sweet loot), I’m actually fairly comfortable with the idea that Wintersday has been pretty much all about cosmetics. I hope it’s also managed to appease some of the players upset with the prospect of ANet concentrating on Ascended gear and potentially ruining the idea of horizontal progression, and while the event hasn’t been perfectly run in my opinion (and that’s me being critical), I’ve still had a lot of fun just focusing on picking up neat things with little actual impact on my fighting time. But then I’m easy to please – I’m probably going to make a shortbow alt purely to use the slingshot skin I plan to pick up.

With that said, it might have been nice to offer folks the opportunity to treat Cogs as tokens that they can trade for gear, but they can’t really do that now because that’s bound to upset the players who have already used up theirs. I’ve managed to make money this event through selling gear picked up in the Infinirarium and selling a few snowflake-based items (hopefully avoiding the salvage exploit in doing so, as they were high enough in value on the Trading Post that anyone attempting to take advantage would only find themselves making money if they managed to get 5 Ectos from a single piece), and hunting for presents to sell can be a reasonable way to earn a few extra silver.

I don’t think that big rewards should be a part of the event, though. Wintersday has always seemed like an excuse for fun and frivolity, and I’m happy with that – I don’t personally feel that every event needs to come with financial gain, and I’m fairly happy with encouraging different players to enjoy themselves during different events rather than try to please them all at once.